Although I defended and deployed a “sourcer + recruiter” model, and in fact I do recognize the value of an independent sourcing role, I’m not dogmatic and believe each organization must find the best way to have their recruitment teams performing their best. It depends on the type of recruited profiles, industry, team size, who engages with clients and other variables.

On this post I’ll share my experience and leave my take on the ancient “sourcer and recruiter” war.

The Challenge

IT staffing business is tough. It’s subject to a fierce and ever growing competition, Clients demand fast and suitable responses, Candidates are extremely volatile, and Consultants can easily churn.

A lot of times business lacks enough candidates to deal with increasing Client demand and Candidate “reuse” (resends and parallelization) won’t be the answer. Frustration settles in. Recruiters aren’t reaching enough candidates or fast enough and Managers aren’t able to deliver the proper response to their clients.

It will be easy to point fingers. Managers complaining about the lack of options for their clients thus losing business opportunities and Recruiters complaining about the long decision time thus losing candidates.

It’s not enough to be better, it’s mandatory to be faster.

There is no unique recipe. Any organization that decides to implement a model like this will have its own journey and result.

The Split

Splitting the recruitment team into two separate roles, Sourcer and Recruiter, might just give a good kick.

Each role doesn’t work without the other, each has its own specific challenges and opens new perspectives and growth dimensions that weren’t available before.

It’s easy to consider Recruiter as the next step for a Sourcer, but these two roles might require people with different profile, motivation and career paths (past or future). So it’s not fair to consider that one precedes the other. I can picture a Sourcer with 5+ years of experience as someone who can excel at knowing the best technics to zoom in the best candidates, how to get their attention and having major impact on a company’s talent acquisition chain.

What it takes to be a Sourcer

Communication skills and conformable engaging with people (whatever the channel)

Like and feel comfortable having phone conversations (having a good voice might be a plus)

Willing to get outside, showcase the company and find candidates where it takes (job fairs, industry events or anywhere else)

What it takes to be a Recruiter

Sales skills and capable to pitch and inspire

Like and feel comfortable with people (get to know and understand them)

Ability to establish rapport a deep conversations

Ability to read people and formulate accurate assessment

Great at note taking (or good memory to do it later after the interview).

Good memory to remember candidates (and open positions) on the fly

The importance of the Head of Research

In this ecosystem, one third role will be very relevant. The Head of Research, not only will have to deal with the usual activities, such as overall management, being a reference, build and grow the team, promote new/best practices, but also with:

Assure that sourcer effort is aligned with business and recruiter needs

Lead “scrum-like” meetings to promote candidate and information sharing

Direct recruiter effort towards sourcers or vice-versa

Manage potential rotation between roles

Act as sourcer or recruiter when necessary

Note that even for some of the “usual activities” the Head of Research will sometimes have the need to use “double lens” glasses to tackle with two different requirement subsets.

It’s easy to consider Recruiter as the next step for a Sourcer, but these two roles might require people with different profile, motivation and career paths (past or future). So it’s not fair to consider that one precedes the other.

Issues and difficulties

Just like any other change, there might be some suspicion or resistance towards change.

To minimize it, during design phase, key people must take part in the process. This allows to identify pain points early in the process and take action.

Commissions are very sensitive subject and whenever something threats to change it, it’s time to take action. The incentive model had to be adapted and a “sharing” model will do the trick to make sure both roles work together and towards the same goal.

Immediately after incentives comes second major issue – candidate “ownership”. You don’t want to mess around with a recruiter’s candidate. So fine-tune ownership with simple ground rules between Recruiters and Sourcers. Make it clear and fair.

Sourcer role could be considered subordinate of the recruiter role or a professional might feel her/his role is getting trimmed down. Never let this happen, ever. Both roles, their characteristics, activities, potential path had to be thoroughly explained. With two new separate paths, either role gains a wider range of technics and knowledge that couldn’t be explored before since everyone had to do everything.

One thing is hiring someone for an active team, something completely different is to split a team into two roles. To have everyone comfortable in the new “skin” assess individual profile together with and personal desire and taken both into consideration. On top of this establish an “open-seat” policy so a recruiter could swap role with a fellow sourcer, or vice-versa, in a controlled way.

This change introduces a new role and with it a new link in the chain that could lead to information loss or misinformation in the “Client-Manager-Candidate” channel. There are some ways to minimize this:

Recruiters must work close to Hiring Managers

If possible define a scheme to rotate recruiters across all Hiring Managers

Have regular “scrum-like” meetings for a more structured sharing between everyone

What to expect

There is no unique recipe. Any organization that decides to implement a model like this will have its own journey and result.

In our case, after model design, refinement and fixing loose ends, the team quickly got the hang of it, everyone naturally was fitted in the new position and new team members were already hired to the new model.

Results began to pop short after 4 weeks with positive impact in the business. After 12 months we’ve experienced over 35% increase on the number of candidate submittals and 34% increase on the number of placements.

This new model can also bring other positive outcomes:

Better alignment of all the team with the strategy in place

New career opportunities for the recruitment team

Closer proximity between recruitment team and business units

Explore new activities and technics that weren’t explored before due to lack of focus

…and the possibility for recruitment teams to reach new excellence stages

What are your thoughts? Have you experienced a similar process? What would you do different?

1 Comment

Susana Correia

on September 22, 2016

One year after working according to this model, the balance is rather positive. At the beginning, it wasn’t easy, I must say. A new mindset was required to persuade this could be the right path, and if it wasn’t, or if it isn’t, other methods can be chosen.

While a sourcer, I feel myself so inspired almost as I felt with the traditional recruiter role. As a Head of Research, I followed directly every changes and doubts brought by this model. First, the doubts concerning to responsibilities of each team member arose. Cleared up these doubts, other questions concerning to motivation “will I like it? , will I be able to adjust to the new responsibilities?”
Regarding to incentives (commissions) many concerns arose, as well as the importance of the role of each team member. It wasn’t easy, it isn’t easy to show that these roles are connected to each other, and that the recruiter is not an evolution of the sourcer.

All over a year, there was opportunity to questioning, clarifying, experiencing, and making. I defined roles, showing and proving the importance of each of them. I helped to increase the team, and drove role changes. One year on our team is comfortable and happy thanks to this model, as well as pleased with our performance!